Gary Schneeberger

Despite Layoffs, Focus Spending Millions of Super Bowl Ad

Submitted by Kyle on January 19, 2010 - 12:30pm

Just a few months ago, Focus on the Family underwent yet another round of layoffs, thereby reducing its workforce to 860, down from 1400 in 2002. The reason cited for the layoffs was the organization's shrinking budget, which makes the millions they are about to spend running an anti-choice Super Bowl ad all the more remarkable:

Focus on the Family will air a 30-second television spot featuring University of Florida star quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother Pam, during the Super Bowl Feb. 7.

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TNS Media Intelligence reported Monday that 30-second Super Bowl commercial slots are selling for $2.5 million to $2.8 million, down from last year's record price on NBC of $3 million, to reach an estimated 100 million viewers.

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"Every cent for this ad was paid for by generous donors who specifically gave for this project because they are excited about this opportunity for Focus to show who we are and what we do," [Focus spokesman Gary Schneeberger] said.

So donors coughed up millions so Focus could run a Super Bowl ad while laying off hundreds of employees and apparently the organization doesn't see anything wrong with that:

NEWSCHANNEL 13: "If this has been in the work for a few months…why not tell the people donating this money, ‘how about you donate the money and we don't layoff employees instead?'"

"One of the things about those who work at Focus is really, it's more than a job it's a calling, and one of the things that we did in that staff reduction was look at ways to improve our efficiencies," said Schneeberger. "I don't know if there's a designated way to say I want that to go to employee salaries, but the general fund is where employee salaries come from."

NEWSCHANNEL 13: "Should any of those former employees think any different that their jobs could have been saved by someone donating to the extent of $2.5 million to Focus on the Family for jobs and for paying salaries, instead of for a Super Bowl ad?"

"I can't really speak for what the employees who were affected by that situation would say," said Schneeberger.

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The Religious Right's New Demand: Stop Calling Us the Religious Right

Submitted by Kyle on February 12, 2009 - 12:26pm

It seems that leaders of the Religious Right are tired of being associated with the Religious Right because nobody likes the Religious Right. Unfortunately for them, they are the Religious Right and that is what we are going to keep calling them, especially now that they are saying we should stop calling them that:

[S]everal politically conservative evangelicals said in interviews that they do not want to be identified with the "Religious Right," "Christian Right," "Moral Majority," or other phrases still thrown around in journalism and academia.

"There is an ongoing battle for the vocabulary of our debate," said Gary Bauer, president of American Values. "It amazes me how often in public discourse really pejorative phrases are used, like the 'American Taliban,' 'fundamentalists,' 'Christian fascists,' and 'extreme Religious Right.' "

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Gary Schneeberger, vice president of media and public relations for Focus on the Family, said that when writers include terms like "Religious Right" and "fundamentalist," they can create negative impressions.

"Terms like 'Religious Right' have been traditionally used in a pejorative way to suggest extremism," Schneeberger said. "The phrase 'socially conservative evangelicals' is not very exciting, but that's certainly the way to do it."

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[M]any groups would rather distance themselves from the Religious Right, even though they may agree on several political issues. Richard Land said he corrects numerous reporters who call him a leader of the Religious Right, explaining that he represents a group of Southern Baptists who would probably consider themselves conservative evangelicals.

"When the so-called 'Religious Right' agrees with us, we applaud their good taste and good judgment," said Land, who is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention. Some phrases need to be eliminated from journalists' vocabulary entirely, he said. "Until Tony Perkins or Jim Dobson puts a pistol on the table and threatens to kill someone, they shouldn't be called ayatollah of the Right or the Jihadists of the Right."

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Organizational leaders like Tony Perkins of Family Research Council want a term that includes other religious groups like Catholics, Jews, and Mormons so that they can see themselves as fighting for the same cause.

"It's not accurate to say that the Christian Right or the Religious Right is simply a narrow slice of evangelicals," Perkins said. "Will everyone identify themselves as part of the Religious Right? No, but they do share a portion of values."

If the phrase "Religious Right" has negative connotations, it probably stems primarily from the fact that the people who have traditionally represented the Religious Right have caused it to, you know, have negative connotations.

When people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson go on television and blame the 9/11 attacks on "pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, [and] all of them who have tried to secularize America," that is the sort of thing that tends to create negative impressions about the Religious Right.

And even if they were called "socially conservative evangelicals," this type of rhetoric would still create negative impressions about the term "socially conservative evangelicals" ... and then "socially conservative evangelicals" would be telling everyone to stop calling them "socially conservative evangelicals."

You see, it is not the term that it is problem - it is the Religious Right's agenda and rhetoric.

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Focus Yanks Beck Interview Amid Complaints That “Mormonism is a Cult”

Submitted by Kyle on January 5, 2009 - 9:47am

Back before the holidays, I came across a press release on Christian Newswire from Steve McConkey of Underground Apologetics blasting Focus on the Family for posting a short interview with Glenn Beck about his new book "The Christmas Sweater." McConkey was outraged that Focus dared to post the interview without mentioning that Beck is Mormon and that “Mormonism is a cult”:

While Glenn's social views are compatible with many Christian views, his beliefs in Mormonism are not. Clearly, Mormonism is a cult. The CitizenLink story does not mention Beck's Mormon faith, however, the story makes it look as if Beck is a Christian who believes in the essential doctrines of the faith.

Through the years, Focus on the Family has done great things to help the family and has brought attention to the many social ills that are attacking the family.

However, to promote a Mormon as a Christian is not helpful to the cause of Jesus Christ. For Christians to influence society, Christians should be promoting the central issues of the faith properly without opening the door to false religions.

At the time, I ignored the press release because it seemed like just another example of a relatively unknown and unimportant fringe right-wing figure trying to gin up some press for himself … but it turns out that McConkey’s gripes apparently had more influence than I had realized as Focus subsequently pulled the interview from its website:

James Dobson's Focus on the Family ministry has pulled from its CitizenLink Web site an article about talk show host Glenn Beck's book "The Christmas Sweater" after some complained that Beck's LDS faith is a "cult" and "false religion" and shouldn't be promoted by a Christian ministry.

When contacted Friday, a Focus on the Family worker at the ministry in Colorado Springs, Colo. confirmed that the article had been pulled …

For his part Beck is none-too-pleased with Focus’s “censorship” while the organization insists that McConkey’s attack had nothing to do with its decision to yank the article:

Focus on the Family got to work this week in explaining in detail why it pulled from its website an interview with a Mormon author.

“We intended no insult,” expressed ministry spokesman Gary Schneeberger, in a statement. “[W]e merely miscalculated on how best to feature Glenn [Beck], whom we greatly appreciate.”

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Beck, however, maintains that the book's message can be and has been embraced by people of different faiths and should not be “censored” because of his own personal religious views. The book tells the narrative of a boy named Eddie who embarks on a dark and painful journey on the road to manhood.

“The Christmas Sweater is a story about the idea of Christmas as a time for redemption and atonement,” Beck expressed in a released statement after the interview was pulled from Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink website.

“Whatever your beliefs about my religion, the concept of religious tolerance is too important to be sacrificed in response to pressure from special interest groups, especially when it means bowing to censorship,” he added.

According to Schneeberger, however, Focus on the Family could not intimate to its evangelical base that the differences in Mormon faith and the historic evangelical faith are inconsequential.

“We can, and do, gladly cooperate with friends outside of the evangelical heritage on common causes; but in no case do we intend to alter our clear distinction as unwaveringly grounded in evangelical theology,” he explained.

But Schneeberger made sure to also distance the ministry from another that had strongly rebuked it for the article’s posting.

“[W]e do not condone the tone of communications put out from UnderGround Apologetics,” he clarified, referring to the controversial apologetics ministry that spoke out against Focus on the Family last week. “And we can without reservation say that the group's news release had nothing to do with our decision to pull the article from publication."